Since humans settled into settled communities where a common identity was created, an us, was created humans often, in order to maintain that sense of community, that sense of a common identity, have also often created a them, an other, an often evil them and other, a them that was everything us, we, were not. For example, many Americans during the Cold War believed that us. At the same time they believed they, the Soviets, were not. We had our god. They had no god. We wanted to enlighten the world about the joys of a capitalist economy and a “democratic” political system. They had a communist economy and a communist political system that was everything ours was not. We were freethinkers. They were brainwashed or terrorised. We were good. They were bad.
Today despite the end of the Cold War the same us and them is at still at play in the fields of the lords of the nations. Today from Finland (not the Finland Station) to Canada and from France to the United State, Russia is still the essence of evil (along with the Chinese and the Iranians). These Boris Badanov's took Crimea from the Ukraine. They interfere in elections. They attacked and continue to attack the Ukraine. They are barbarians.
That us, we (and members of our clique) may not be that different from them rarely crosses we's mind because we are good, the best, the essence of saintliness in the world today. We may attack Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. We may interfere in Ukrainian elections. But hey we are the good guys, we are the white hats, so it is OK for us to do that and proclaim our imperial sovereignty over Latin America and Canada in the name of economic and political freedom (a hollow rhetoric that still plays well in Peoria). If they, the evil Russkies, do the same thing in their near beyond (their version of the Monroe Doctrine) that is not kosher because we are the good guys, we are on god’s side, they are neither.
This creation of an evil boogeyman can make us see fictions. It can make us believe that Russia is a major great power (we, the US, are actually the major and to some extent only imperial great power, of course), a major great power that wants to conquer the West and which threatens the Western way of life, the West being those once industrial and now postindustrial countries including Germany, Finland, France, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Canada, and the big bloke on the block the US) despite the fact that they, the Badonov's can’t even defeat the Ukraine or take control of the ethnically Russian parts of that failed state (failed because of ethnic diversity and accompanying ethnic tensions that impact the political arena)? We can even make believe that the Ukraine is “democratic” (meaning, of course, dominated by right thinking elites who are generally the puppets of corporate capitalist imperialists) despite the fact that the ethnically Ukrainian president of the country has vetoed elections because it will break up a nation already riven through by ethnic tensions particularly between Ukrainians and Russians. These fictions can even make us believe that we are just lending poor Ukraine (shades of poor Edith) a helping hand eliding, in the process, that our intelligence services have been doing the same thing the evil Russians are doing in the Ukraine and the world at large. But then we are the good guys and if we don’t do something the boogeyman, Satan, Jason, Freddie, Michael Meyers, whoever, is going to get us and are chains are going to grow oh oh oh oh.
So eat your spinach. Pray to god or progress or historical inevitability, whatever. And always be on your guard or the boogie man will get you and, at best, make you his slave even if he is so weak and dispiritied that he can’t even defeat the Ukraine (and thank beezus he can't use the Bomb because of the madness of MAD) because that mean old bear is loose in the woods, not our woods but who cares. We are the policeman of the world and they are the perps we are after. Can I get an amen?
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